2013 Minard

MINARD EDITOR AWARD HONOREE

Michael WilliamsGlobal Enterprise Editor Reuters

Mike Williams is the Global Enterprise Editor at Reuters, a position he assumed in 2011. He developed the news agency's global enterprise and investigative operation, a team of 16 editors and reporters in the U.S., Europe and Asia. In addition to generating its own work, the team is responsible for driving investigative and explanatory journalism in the agency's news bureaus across the world, and for training Reuters reporters in enterprise reporting and writing techniques.

Since joining Reuters, Mike has overseen a number of agenda-setting special reports. In a series of investigations, Mike's team exposed how Chesapeake Energy, a great American success story, was built on shaky ethical and financial foundations. The series triggering criminal and civil probes and prompted the company first to strip McClendon of his chairmanship and, in January, to announce that he will step down as CEO.

A series of stories on corporate tax avoidance in Europe created a sensation when it revealed the tax practices of big corporations, including Starbucks, Amazon, eBay and others. As a result of the reports, there is a new and vibrant debate on taxation in Britain, Germany, France and other countries in Europe, and Prime Minister David Cameron has said he will put corporate tax reform on the agenda of the G20.

A data-driven series from December 2012, written under Mike's leadership, offered original insight into income inequality in the U.S. and the role played by government in exacerbating or alleviating it. Mike's team also exposed the authoritarian tendencies, crony capitalism and ethnic hatreds that are holding back a full embrace of democracy in Myanmar this past year. And a 2011 series of investigations of shell companies traced the myriad ways that U.S. laws enable corporations, international and domestic, to operate secretly in this country-sometimes protecting themselves from exposure, sometimes insulating themselves from alleged wrongdoing, sometimes perpetrating scams that have bilked millions from U.S. taxpayers.

Before joining Reuters, Mike was with The Wall Street Journal for nearly 20 years, most recently as Deputy Managing Editor and Page-One Editor. In this role, he was one of three deputies to the editor-in-chief who managed the WSJ on a daily basis, where he was responsible for enterprise coverage and investigative projects for print and online, and for selecting and editing all daily news and features that ran on the front page of the Journal.

Mike joined The Wall Street Journal as a Japan Correspondent, based in Tokyo. He went on to hold the positions of Assistant Foreign Editor, Japan Bureau Chief, Southern Europe Bureau Chief & Global Energy Editor and Editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe while at the Journal.

Previously, Mike held positions at Business Tokyo Magazine, Asahi Shimbun and Japan Times. He is the winner of an Overseas Press Club Award, for a five-part series on the Japanese bureaucracy.